Nyckelharpa – May & June 2018

Since everything went really quick and from one week to the other I had a nyckelharpa. Whilst on one evening in May I was still complaining to someone about it, the next morning I had the offer for the instrument and in the evening had decided on buying it.

And one week later I already went to Bremen to pick it up – it still feels surreal, as I had already gotten used to the thought of needing to wait quite a while and then everything was like a miracle and went so fast…

Anyways: so far I haven´t really learned playing an instrument pretty much on my own, and that´s a challenge for me – with flute and cello I always had lessons once a week, here I have Youtube and…myself. And then hope that I will manage somehow.

With this little monthly series I wanna track my progress and share it with you! But keep in mind for this one: neither my phone is a good recorder (have to find a solution for that), nor am I skilled yet as my focus was still on my half marathon and not on playing nyckelharpa.

I kinda feel guilty that I didn´t get to play as much as I had imagined I could´ve been playing but from July on, I will rock this!

“Friarvisan” (played in May and June)

“Friarvisan” is a tune that I already played at the course back in Altenmünster, and already back then I actually enjoyed it. It´s been now the first tune that I started going back to being at home and having my nyckelharpa with me.

And to be honest – I was surprised how well it went, though of course there is a lot to still improve with this tune. The high notes and me are still not best friends, and I really have to work on my bowing technique.

Unfortunately I didn´t get to record it in June anymore, so you get the May version of my playing ^^

“Ode to Joy” (played in June)

Actually I had planned on playing the second tune from the course but I disliked it already back then so I ditched that plan for now and ended up playing “Ode to Joy” which actually started off as an “Ode to Hate” because somehow I didn´t want to get it working. No idea why, as it actually isn´t that difficult, but it was a struggle.

I am not feeling confident with switching strings during playing yet – I know it sounds hilarious, but keep in mind I am not playing for that long yet.